German invasion of Belgium

The German invasion of Belgium occurred from 4 August to 31 October 1914 at the start of World War I. As part of the Schlieffen Plan, the Imperial German Army bypassed the French border defenses by striking through neutral Belgium, overwhelming the country despite French and British aid to the Belgians. The invasion was marked by a German terror campaign, Schrecklichkeit, which saw the Germans burn several towns and villages and massacre 6,000 villagers in an attempt to suppress the Belgian francs-tireurs. On 26 August 1914, the Germans established a military administration to govern Belgium, which would remain under German occupation until the war's end in 1918.

Background
Neutral Belgium was a small country, but densely populated and heavily industrialized. In 1914, it stood in the path of the German attack on France. The German Schlieffen Plan, adopted in 1905, required the bulk of the German army to advance through Belgium. On 2 August 1914, the German ambassador delivered a note to the Belgian government, stating that the German army was going to enter Belgium to forestall a violation of Belgian neutrality by France. The note gave the Belgians 12 hours to decide on whether to allow this or go to war. The next day, Belgium informed Germany that it would resist "by all means in its power".

Belgium's army was weak, and military service had only been introduced in 1913. In their favor, the Belgians ahd built state-of-the-art fortresses at Liege and Namur. In addition, Britain was a guarantor of Belgian neutrality under the 1839 Treaty ofLondon. At the outset of the war, the Belgian government told civilians not to carry out acts that might give the Germans a pretext for "bloodshed or pillage or massacre of the innocent population."

Invasion
German forces invaded Belgium on 4 August. Immediately in their path lay the industrial city of Liege, surrounded by fortresses. Expecting only token resistance, the Germans instructed a force of 39,000 troops, under General Otto von Emmich, to seize the city in 48 hours. Belgium's King Albert I entrusted the defense of Liege to the reliable General Gerard Leman, with firm instructions to hold out to the end. The Belgians blew up the bridges over the Meuse River to slow the German advance. When Emmich's infantry and cavalry reached Liege, their frontal assaults on prepared Belgian defensive positions were repulsed by artillery and machine-gun fire with heavy losses.

The great German offensive was immobilized until, on 7 August, staff officer Erich Ludendorff and his forces penetrated the city and received the surrender of its citadel. Most of the other fortresses held out, their concrete and armor plate invulnerable to German artillery. But on 12 August, Krupp 420mm and Skoda 305mm howitzers - monstrous siege guns - reached Liege. Within three days the Germans had bombarded the fortresses into submission, and the way was open for them to flood across Belgium. German troops were under orders to respond to any Belgian civilian resistance with summary executions and collective reprisals. From the first day of the invasion, soldiers shot Belgian civilians and burned down houses as a punishment for alleged acts of resistance.

Civilians pay the price
Many German officers seem to have regarded the fact that Belgium fought at all as a form of treachery and a cause for outrage. Rumors of attacks on soldiers by Belgian civilians and of the mutilation of corpses were rife in the German ranks and repeated by the German press. In the confusion of war fought amid towns and villages, it was easy for troops to convince themselves that they had been shot at by civilians, when in fact they were victims of friendly fire or Belgian troops firing from houses.

There is no evidence that civilians resisted the Germans at all, but nonresistance did them no good. In many places prominent individuals - typically the parish priest and the mayor - were shot. Occasionally, massacres occurred. In the town of Dinant on 23 August, 674 civilians, including women and children, were executed by German firing squad. At Tamines, the death toll was 384.

German advance
News of German attacks on civilians and the burning of towns and villages was inflated by rumors, such as the false allegation that German soldiers were cutting off the right hands of male children. A flood of Belgian refugees was soon fleeing from the advancing German forces. Determined to continue the struggle but incapable of facing the Germans in the field, King Albert withdrew the bulk of his army to Antwerp, which had a fortified perimeter. Brussels was abandoned to occupation by the German 1st Army. Father south, the fortress complex of Namur, in the path of the German 2nd Army, held out for only three days after the German siege guns arrived on 21 August.

By the third week in August, British and French troops were beginning to engage with the Germans on Belgian soil. As the next phase of the war opened, however, there was a final paroxysm of German rage against the Belgian nation. On 25 August, German troops occupying the historic city of Louvain, 19 miles east of Brussels, fired on one another in a confused nighttime incident. Convinced they had been attacked by civilians rather than friendly fire, German soldiers reacted ruthlessly, looting and burning the town's buildings (including its famous medieval library), executing more than 200 people, and emptying the town of its population. The destruction of Louvain proved to be a propaganda disaster for Germany, confirming an image of the brutal "Huns" that would sustain its enemies in war for four years.

Aftermath
The Germans occupied almost the whole of Belgium. Antwerp fell in early October, but Belgian forces held on to a strip of the Flanders coast in the Battle of the Yser later that month. The Germans placed Belgium under military government. In 1916-17, Belgians were deported to work in German factories. Belgian resistance workers who spied on German troop movements or aided escaping Allied prisoners of war were executed. Many Belgians also suffered from malnutrition, despite food aid from the United States. Flemish separatism was encouraged by the Germans, and the annexation of Belgium became a German war aim.